Yes, service for Google Talk (and Hangouts) is down, meaning that you're probably having a much more productive snow day than you anticipated.

Or the disruption could mean that your easiest option for communicating with teleworking co-workers has crashed on the worst day possible.

Google first confirmed the crash on its status dashboard around noon Monday, saying that it was aware of the issue and would continue to provide updates throughout the day. The latest, which went up around 1:15 p.m., said that the company is still working on the problem and would provide more information when it could.

"Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 3/17/14 2:15 PM with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience," read a status statement on the page.

TechCrunch had also reported that there was an issue with Google Spreadsheets, but that appears to have been resolved.

In the meantime, folks, stick to e-mail for your back-and-forth conversations with snowbound colleagues. Alternatively, it might be a good time to download WhatsApp.

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